Holocaust tour will set record straight, says Irving

The controversial British historian David Irving was met with outrage in
Poland yesterday as he claimed the country should be “grateful” that he was
running a £1,500 a head “unforgettable” tour of Holocaust sites, including
the Treblinka death camp.

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An Austrian court sentenced David Irving to three years in jail in 2006 for his 1989 claims that there were no gas chambers in the Third ReichPhoto: REUTERS

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The 'unforgettable' tour of Holocaust sites is set to include the Treblinka death camp in Poland, pictured in 1944Photo: ALAMY

By Matthew Day in Warsaw

9:46PM BST 21 Sep 2010

Mr Irving said he would “set the record straight” on the Nazis’ extermination of six million Jews, despite the fact that an Austrian court sentenced him in 2006 to three years in jail for his 1989 claims that there were no gas chambers in the Third Reich.

He was released and deported to Britain after serving only one year and told the court that his claims had been a mistake.Holocaust survivors and anti-racism groups called on Polish authorities to block his nine-day visit.

Mr Irving told The Daily Telegraph: “I am baffled by the reaction I’ve had in Poland because they should be very grateful that I am here.

“Here I am lecturing to the revisionists and setting the record straight. I am saying to those who believe that not a hair was harmed on the head of the Jewish community that you couldn’t be more wrong.”

He described people who branded him a Holocaust denier as “criminal, lying lunatics”.

Enthusiasts from Britain, Germany, Australia and America have paid £1,500 each, excluding flights, to accompany Mr Irving on a tour he has billed as an opportunity to experience “real history”.

It includes a visit to The Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s Eastern Front headquarters at Ketrzyn in north-eastern Poland, and to a bunker once used by the SS commander Heinrich Himmler, as well as to the site of the Treblinka extermination camp.

Dr Rafal Pankowski, of the Never Again Association, which campaigns against racism and anti-Semitism, described Mr Irving’s presence in Poland as “unacceptable and offensive to the memory of the victims” of the war.

A Polish anti-racism group requested a Warsaw court to begin a criminal investigation against Mr Irving in an attempt to block the tour.

Dariusz Gabrel, from the group, Open Republic, described Mr Irving as having been one of the “foremost Holocaust deniers” and called for his prosecution under Polish laws that prohibit the denial of Nazi crimes.

“Material evidence clearly shows that he has broken the law,” he wrote in the request to the court. “Poland, the country in which the Nazis committed their crimes against humanity, should be especially sensitive to Irving’s kind of crime.”

The historian said that he wanted to take his tour group to Treblinka, where an estimated 800,000 people died, because it was a “real death camp”.

He recently accused Polish authorities, in contrast, of turning Auschwitz into a “Disney-style” tourist site complete with fake watchtowers.

Mr Irving’s visit has caused anger among Poland’s Jews, who made up about half of the total of six million dead.